Koha wins Free Software award
May 28th, 20:23 UTC
Seattle, WA. May 28th 2003 -- Koha library automation software is recognized at the first Trophees du Libre awards. Koha, the world's best Open Source Library Automation System, has been
awarded the prize in the 'Software for Public Administration' category
of the Trophees du Libre in Soissons, France. The Trophees du Libre
contest was created to spur interest in Open Source systems with the
potential to benefit consumers and businesses. There were 113
candidates considered in 6 categories in this, the inaugural Trophees
du Libre.
Rosalie Blake, Head of Libraries at Horowhenua Library Trust, said,
"Koha has been an exciting project to be involved with. What really
is the icing on the cake with this system though, is that it's being
given away free to other libraries. The system, under the terms of
the GNU public license, is open source, and runs on Linux. Anyone can
download it and install it without paying a penny in licensing
costs."
Pat Eyler, manager of the Koha project added, "I see this as a
real pat on the back to all the developers, testers, documentation
writers, and users who have worked hard to make Koha a really useful
application for libraries around the world."
Paul Poulain, Koha's release manager for the upcoming 2.0 release, was
on hand to accept the prize -- Koha's third award since its initial
deployment in early 2000. As a prize, the Koha project received a Sun
RAQ server, which will be used to improve the development and testing
process used by the group.
One of the biggest benefits of being involved in an international
competion of this sort was interacting with the other projects
represented. Paul Poulain says that the French Linux distribution
AbulEdu, which is geared at French schools, will be adding Koha to
their distribution soon as a result of meeting them at the awards
ceremony.
With another award under its belt, the Koha community is looking
forward to their next big step -- the release of Koha 2.0! This new
version of Koha will feature enhanced services, full MARC support,
translations into multiple languages, and better implementation tools.
For more information about Koha, please contact info@koha.org or see http://www.koha.org.
(Submitted by Pat Eyler of koha)
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